The story
It's a good place to start: the chiming guitar of Andy Summers, the deep echo of Jamaican dub, and the bright, rolling dance rhythms of West African highlife. BASIC also pull in Tuareg grooves from the Sahara, scratchy funk and plenty of open space.
The band is Chris Forsyth on guitar, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums and electronics, and Douglas McCombs of Tortoise on a six-string bass tuned an octave below a guitar. Forsyth named the band after Basic, a 1984 album by Lou Reed's guitarist Robert Quine and drummer Fred Maher. Few people understood it when it came out. Record collectors have been passing it around ever since.
“I'd say we invented 60% of this record on the spot at Electrical… This record is exciting for me because I really didn't know what it was until we were finished with it.”
Much of BASIC's new album was made up on the spot, in two days at Chicago's Electrical Audio. "I really didn't know what it was until we were finished with it," Forsyth says. Live, it works the same way. The three of them watch each other closely, and a song can change direction on a nod or a glance. Pitchfork heard the unspoken message as "We've got this, go your own way."
Opening the night is a neighbor. Matt Krefting is a writer and musician who lives here in Holyoke. He has played in Son of Earth, The Believers, Idea Fire Company and Sunburned Hand of the Man, and he makes his own solo music for cassettes, released by labels including Open Mouth, Kye and Ultra Eczema. His writing has appeared in The Wire, The Huffington Post and Bull Tongue Review.
Keep an eye on the band. That's where the songs turn.